


last call

by thatdarkhairedgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bars and Pubs, Character Study, F/M, Hook-Up, Late Night Conversations, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29132865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdarkhairedgirl/pseuds/thatdarkhairedgirl
Summary: They were never close, back in Hogwarts, not until seventh year, not until –Hannah and Neville navigate a night at the Leaky Cauldron. It goes better than she could have expected.
Relationships: Hannah Abbott/Neville Longbottom
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	last call

**Author's Note:**

> A shorter, more condensed version of this fic originally appeared as a gift for **keyflight790** in the 2020 Winter Fic Exchange. Many, _many_ thanks are also due to my beautiful, beloved **watername** , who took time out of her busy schedule to look this over for me.

The pub is crowded tonight – busier than she’s seen it in a while, especially this close to closing, on a random Tuesday in October – and Hannah hasn’t stopped moving for at least an hour, even though there are two other waitresses working on the floor. Hannah winds through the crowd with her drink tray and stops at a corner table of Ministry trainees, the group of young men in pinstriped robes on their third round of the night, clearly looking to blow off steam in any way they can.

“Stressful day, yeah?” she asks, setting five pints of Strange Brew on their tabletop once she’s squeezed in past the witches leaving their table. Three of them nod and mumble in agreement, the fourth reaches past her to down his glass in nearly one go, but the fifth looks her up and down with a leering tilt to his grin, letting his hand brush against hers as he takes his beer.

“Something like that,” he says with a wink, licking his lips before taking a long drink. He gestures to the crowded pub before he adds, “Think your night’s about the same, innit?”

Hannah nods absently, glancing over her shoulder to the clock behind the bar. Forty minutes until she can ring the bell for last call; forty minutes until this nightmare of a shift can end. She tacks on her best ‘what can you do?’ smile and is about to ask if they need anything else before she makes her escape, when the man reaches out to grasp her elbow.

“Sit down a sec,” he says, “Have a drink with us,” and his hand slides from her elbow to her lower back, moving his thumb against the sliver of skin between the hem of her blouse and the waistband of her jeans in what he probably thinks is an enticing way, but in truth only makes Hannah want to gag.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she tells him with a shake of her head, brushing him off as nicely as she can. “Another night, maybe. I’ve got to get back to the bar.”

She thinks that will be enough to wriggle out of the situation, but the man is nothing if not persistent: “Come _on_ ,” he wheedles, “Just take a minute. We’re all just getting to know each other, aren’t we?”

His hand comes up again, this time to rest _firmly_ on her bum in a way that makes his intentions clear. He squeezes and Hannah reacts without thinking, smacking the back of his hand so that he pulls back with a laugh, and she’s just about to draw her wand when a shadow crosses her peripheral vision.

“Is there a problem, here?”

Hannah turns and sees that it’s Neville Longbottom who’s come up behind her, standing tall in Auror green and glaring at the wizards around the table. To their credit, the others all seem to acknowledge that this is the sign that their night is coming to an end: they finish their drinks and drop their gazes to the table, shamefaced, before searching through pockets and wallets for enough coin to pay their tab. Their friend is not nearly as self-aware.

“We’re _fine_ ,” he says, scowling up at Neville, barely managing to hide the slur in his words. “Just having a laugh. You know how it is.”

Neville furrows his brow. “Really?” he drawls, and then turns to Hannah. “Do you need a hand?”

Hannah shakes her head. “I think we’re good, so long as this one behaves himself. No need to make a big fuss about it.”

Neville nods, and she moves to step away from the table when the troublemaker does it again: he slaps her arse right as she turns, chuckling to himself at the solid _smack_ of contact, and Neville’s hand goes right to his wand holster, but Hannah is quicker on the draw. Before anyone else can move she sends the man flying backward in his chair with a quick, pointed, “ _Relashio.”_ The man crashes hard into the wall behind him, rattling the photographs hanging over his head, his friends laughing nervously as their corner of the pub goes tentatively still in the aftermath.

“That’s _enough_ ,” Hannah snarls, anger flaring through her, wand tight in her fist. “You can settle your tab and walk out right now, or my Auror friend can march you out in handcuffs. Your choice, _gentlemen_.”

It’s an easy, immediate decision. Chairs scrape against the floor as they scatter from the table, the soberest among them weaving through the crowd to pay at the counter, the troublemaker muttering to himself, rubbing at the back of his head as his friends help him out the Muggleside entrance. Neville crosses his arms over his chest, surveying the scene, and doesn’t look back at her until the last of them has stumbled out through the door.

“Some night, huh?”

Hannah rolls her eyes at him. “We close in thirty,” she says, dusting off her hands on her apron, tucking her wand back into the pocket of her jeans. “Want to grab a bite, after?”

**…**

Hannah Abbott spent the war pushing down her grief in the best way she knew how: she kept herself moving, kept herself working, kept her eyes peeled for trouble and her hurt buried deep inside. She struggled through her classwork and spent afternoons and evenings in Madam Pomfrey’s office, bandaging up her friends and classmates after detentions with the Carrows, and pushed aside her own needy heart to make sure that the others were taken care of. She was good with the littler ones, the firsties and seconds who couldn’t fight back, the smart-mouthed third years who had their hands nailed to their classroom desks for giving cheek. The older DA members were always pointing them in her direction, and Hannah let herself be soft and kind for them, and for all her friends in the DA: she was a warm hug and a gentle distraction, a calm presence in the midst of so much pain and suffering. She couldn’t fight back the way some of the others did – there was no relief in taking revenge on the Slytherins, no solace in their escalating series of dares against the Carrows – but she could take care of the ones doing the fighting. She could keep herself moving forward, even if it was by the skin of her teeth. She could do this much.

The problem was, though, that at the end of it, when the battle was over and the dust had settled, Hannah couldn’t figure out how to stop.

**…**

This is her favorite part of closing: turning down the wireless, dimming the lights, locking all the doors. She’s spelled the chairs to tip upward onto the tabletops and the glassware to soak in the sink, a pair of brooms and dustpans to float their way across the floor. She likes the neatness of it – a place for everything, everything in its place. For a girl whose personal life is so profoundly disorganized, who once got so flustered that she transfigured a ferret into a whole flock of flamingoes, there is something supremely satisfying in magically setting the world around her to rights.

Neville meets her at the back door to the Alley once she’s finished shutting down the bar for the night, smiling at her with this warm, friendly grin that she can’t help but return as she locks the door behind him. They’re going Muggleside tonight, a few blocks from the London proper entrance to the Leaky, and his presence is a comfort as they walk down the dark, empty side street to the pizzeria. Has _been_ a comfort, these past four months. Ever since Robards stuck him with the late patrol, he is usually finishing up his shift around the same time she closes, and they’ve been having a bit of fun with it, since.

“Anyone else you need thrown in irons?” he jokes, rocking a little on his heels as she locks the front doors first with a key, then with her wand. “I don’t have any manacles on me, but I can call Seamus, he might still have a pair left over from his last date with Greengrass.”

“Funny,” she snarks back, “A real comedian, you.”

Neville chuckles under his breath and then they’re off. They go through the routine pleasantries as they make their way to the pizza place: she tells him about her night, the patrons that made her laugh and the ones that made her fume in the pantry before she accidentally set their shoes on fire, and he starts some convoluted story about an Auror training exercise from earlier in the week that he keeps losing the thread of. “Wait, _wait_ ,” he keeps saying, “I forgot to mention, you’ve got to know the thing about Parvati and the hag for this part to make sense, and that’s –”

She laughs at him as he stumbles through the story – laughs _with_ him as he tries to loop his way through this tangent and that, and he blushes a little in the light of the neon sign in the window as they come up to the pizzeria door. It’s nice, being able to talk to someone like this. They were never close, back in Hogwarts, not until seventh year, not until –

Hannah doesn’t let herself finish the thought. She is twenty-three and not that girl anymore, has not been that girl for years – the one who cried when the Carrows tortured Susan’s cat in a Dark Arts lesson, who bottled murtlap essence for her classmates in the privacy of her dorm room and passed it down the furtive line underneath their desks in Muggle Studies. Here, in Muggle London, no Dark Mark hangs in the sky overhead; there are stars glittering above, shining brightly through the light pollution, and everything is clear, if a little too cold for October. For a moment, Hannah Abbott isn’t a war hero or a waitress or anything else; she’s just a girl – no, a young woman, still in the bloom of youth – walking down the street with a friend.

“So, what are you thinking?” he asks once they’re inside, pulling her out of her thoughts, bringing her back to the moment. The pizza place is half-dead, the Muggle girl behind the counter snapping her gum as she waits for them to order. “Cheese and pepperoni for me, anchovy and pineapple for you?”

Hannah makes a face and knocks her elbow into his side.

**…**

Her dad and Professor Sprout convinced her to come back to Hogwarts for a remedial year, but she only made it a little over two months before she left. What was the point? Hannah had spent the better part of a year comforting eleven-year-olds after they’d been tortured by their teachers, had fought in a bloody _battle_ , what did it matter how good her Charms work was, or whether or not she knew the finer points of Gamp’s Elemental Laws of Transfiguration? She sat for her NEWTs with the other of-age students that spring, and she passed enough of them to qualify for a Healing apprenticeship, but every time she thought about working in the maternity ward at St. Mungo’s she felt like she was going to pass out; she felt like a rogue tendril of Devil’s Snare had wound its way around her throat and squeezed.

Hannah didn’t take the apprenticeship, not any of the three times it was offered. Susan went straight into the Aurors after the war, Ernie to Hogwarts and then the Portkey Office – even Justin, when he came out of Azkaban, sat his NEWTs when he’d healed enough and dove headfirst into Advocacy and solicitor coursework. Hannah stayed at the Leaky Cauldron, working day shifts with her grandfather and two of her uncles until the bartender quit, and then she started spending her nights there, too. She liked doing the shopping and the cooking and the inventory, liked setting the staff schedules and booking the guest rooms and walking through the Alley in her off-hours, chatting with the girls who ran the counter at Fortescue’s, the clerks taking their smoke break behind Flourish & Blotts.

Her friends, her dad, they all thought – and still _think_ , some of them, whether they admit it to her or not – that she’s wasting her talents by staying at the Cauldron. That she’s wasting her _time_. Hannah ignores it, as best she can; she’s an Abbott and a Hufflepuff, and hospitality is in her blood twice over. Her life is not smaller for staying, not _simple_ , and she has enough Muggle blood in her to value hard work done _honestly_ , in whatever way that might be.

She was taught this by her mother, after all.

**…**

There are no seats inside the pizza place, so Neville follows Hannah to an empty park bench across the narrow street. A discreetly-cast Warming Charm makes the cold night bearable, and they sit and eat under the streetlight for a little while, talking about her work, his job, gossip in their shared social circle.

“You know how Ernie’s getting married?” she asks him through a mouthful of crust, and Neville nods while he polishes off his own slice. “He’s putting together the guestlist, and he wanted to know if he should put me down for a date, and when I said no, he asked if I wanted him to set me up with someone.”

“And?”

“I had to remind him that the _last time_ he set me up with someone, it was with one of Mandy’s Obliviator coworkers, and I practically had to hex his eyebrows off to get out of there in one piece.”

“Wait, _really?_ What did he do?”

Hannah snorts and swallows the last bite of her pizza. “ _Well_ ,” she says, “To start with, he was rude to the waiter, and vaguely racist and fully xenophobic all through dinner –”

“Nice,” Neville deadpans, “Always a turn-on.”

“I know, right? And I’m sitting there, listening to him say the absolute _worst_ things about House-Elves and Goblins, and that he ‘ _doesn’t usually like a girl with an appetite_ ,’ wondering when I can make a break for it, or if stabbing myself in the thigh with a fork under the table would count as a work emergency, when he leans over the table and tells me – and he is _dead serious_ , mind, absolutely _serious_ when he tells me, ‘this was nice, but if you want me to pay for dessert, I’m going to need a _guarantee_ ,’ and Neville – _Nev_ , he had _taken his shoes off_ under the table, and he kept stroking his damned feet up and down my calf, and –”

Hannah laughs as Neville leans forward on a groan, head falling into his hands.

“He _didn’t!_ ”

“Oh, but he _did!_ Take my advice, and _never_ date a Ministry man – it’s _far_ more trouble than it’s worth.”

Neville groans again, wetting his lips as he looks at her sideways. “I can’t speak on behalf of all wizards, but _please_ ,” he says, “ _Please_ , Hannah, _tell me_ that the single witches of the world are not as bad as that.”

Something must flicker across her face – confusion or curiosity, in a momentary flash – because Neville sits upright when he sees the slight change in her expression, offering her a shrug and an embarrassed smile in return. “Luna and I called it off,” he says, his voice tripping lightly over her name like a loose stone on a walkway. “She’s still working on her Snorkack research and I’m still here, and I’m tired of having a relationship by owl post.”

It takes a moment for Hannah to respond to that; she loves Luna, _knows_ Luna, but knows even more that she is not the selfless, dizzy creature of ethereal light and pixie dust that so many of their friends and classmates seem to take her for. Luna is smart, and Luna is _driven_ , and it is not a happy accident that Luna has lived on four separate continents in the past five years and hasn’t spent more than a few scattered weeks at a time in the UK since she graduated from Hogwarts. You can love someone, Hannah knows, and still not be able to make things work, or twine your future plans with theirs. You can love someone and still not be happy.

“Have you told anyone?” she asks, then, “Is she coming back?” and Neville shrugs again.

“Ginny knows,” he says, “And Harry, too, a couple others. I, um – I haven’t really wanted to talk too much about it. She’s still in Jūrmala, I think. She was stopped in Latvia when we talked things out on a fire call. Her MAGI advisor keeps sending me owls, though, asking if she’s sent a draft of her thesis on ahead. I don’t have the heart to tell him that it’ll probably be a while before he gets a response.”

They sit in careful silence, their breath curling up into the air as the Warming Charm around them starts to fade, until Hannah finds her voice and speaks again. “I’m really sorry,” she tells him, gently, meaning it. She reaches out to squeeze his shoulder and Neville brings his hand up to cover hers, folding his fingers briefly over her own. There’s a strange beat that passes between them, then, something she can’t quite name, and before she can stop herself Hannah is rising from the splintered bench, tugging Neville up with her to his feet.

“Let’s have a drink, then,” she says, tossing their trash in a nearby bin, hooking a thumb over her shoulder at the road behind them. “This is your first real night of singledom, Longbottom. Let’s start you off right.”

**…**

One night, maybe a year after she’d made the conscious choice not to go back to school, she got into a screaming match with her dad that put her into such a state that her magic crackled clear across the kitchen – it rolled off of her in a sharp, electric wave, sent the plates and cups shaking in their cabinets, made the silverware rattle themselves right out of the drawers. _Your mother wanted more for you_ , he’d said, slamming down the St. Mungo’s pamphlets on the table that she’d stuffed down into the bin, the owl post from the head of the program, asking if she’d reconsidered applying. _She would be ashamed to see you hiding, wasting your life slinging beers in a bar for a handful sickles and knuts when you could be doing just about anything else._

Hannah doesn’t remember how it ended, just the tense, irrational coil that wound its way through her neck and shoulders; how she felt like her entire body was one giant raw nerve, fraying and exposed, and that this petty, stupid fight was the last thing that sent her over the edge. Hannah and her father squared off on each other and she felt like she was cracking into pieces, seams popping and unraveling in ways she couldn’t see but certainly _felt_ , all her patience and pent-up anguish finally unspooling around her like heaps of unwound thread. Her father shouted at her and she screamed right back, and Disapparated out of the house so quickly and so recklessly that it was an absolute bloody miracle she didn’t Splinch herself in half in the process. She wound up at the far end of Diagon Alley, right at the corner where it turned into Knockturn proper, and she was just so absolutely _blind_ with anger and tears that she couldn’t figure out where she’d landed. It was after midnight and she was shoeless and sobbing in the middle of the street, and she still doesn’t know how long she stood there, crying in the gutter like a crazy person, until an Auror found her and helped her down the road to the Cauldron.

Her grandfather met them at the back door and shuffled her inside while he finished closing for the night. Tom Abbott was always a great bear of a man, with big hands and broad shoulders, a quick temper and middling humor. His relationship with her dad was strained at times, but he never took it out on her, his favorite – his only – granddaughter. Hannah sat alone at the empty bar and watched him move through the room, feeling grey and empty, taking small sips from the glass of water he’d set in front of her. When he was done, he sat her down at the rickety desk in his back office and pulled out a dusty bottle of firewhiskey from a drawer, then magicked up two glasses. He ran a hand through his graying hair and told her, quite frankly, that he knew she’d been having a bad time of it, and that she was doing an absolute shite job at pretending she wasn’t. He told her they could talk about it if she wanted, but it was fine if she didn’t; he was a lifelong barman, and he’d heard and seen almost everything a person could do to themselves, to each other. There wasn’t much left that could surprise him.

It took her a few minutes, and more than a few shaky sips of firewhiskey, but Hannah eventually gathered up the strength to talk. There, in that cramped back office, they finished the entire bottle in the time it took her to tell him about That Year, about grieving for her mother, about fighting with her father, about constantly feeling sad and shiftless and alone. Her throat was raw by the end of it, her cheeks wet with tears. Hannah was surprised when her grandfather reached out to brush them away; she hadn’t even realized she’d started crying again. He stroked her hair back behind her ear, the expression on his lined face soft, understanding, and then took both her hands in his, squeezing gently.

“It’s a fine thing to take care of people,” he’d said to her, his voice rough, but kind. “You and I both know it is. But you can’t take care of others, sweetheart, if you don’t take care of yourself.”

He suggested a compromise: if she apologized to her father for running off the way she did, and if she went to a counselor to help set herself to rights, then he would train her, _properly_ train her, how to run the Leaky Cauldron. He would teach her everything he knew about running a bar and kitchen and inn. She could keep her own hours and take over one of the upper flats for her own space. He would help her pay for the MAGI coursework for a Business and Accounting degree, and the Leaky would be hers and hers alone whenever he decided to retire. She wouldn’t be just a waitress anymore, or a bartender, but his full partner in the family business. He told her this, and Hannah felt –

She felt –

She felt _relief_ from the offer, overwhelming and powerful _relief_ , as if she’d been swimming in deep, dark water for a very long time, and had finally broken through to the surface. Relief, because finally, _finally_ , someone understood what she’d needed, without even having to ask.

**…**

Free alcohol is _definitely_ a fringe benefit of running a pub. Hannah slides past the counter once she’s locked the front door behind her, spelling up a pair of clean shot glasses from the rack in the kitchen, picking through the bottles that line the shelf behind the bar. Vipertooth Vodka, Draíochta, Old Tituba’s Voodoo Rum; Hannah taps the neck of each bottle in turn as she runs through her mental Rolodex of drinks, trying to think of something Neville might like.

“You’re a firewhiskey man, yeah?” she asks, glancing up at their shared reflection in the mirrored paneling: Neville has taken his place at the barstool behind her, his sleeves rolled up, his elbows resting on the counter in a way that shows off his forearms. He shrugs, and Hannah thinks back to the last time he came to the Leaky in an unofficial capacity – the party they’d held for Ron, when he'd announced he was quitting the Aurors. Neville drank lightly that night: a couple pints of Strange Brew, nothing harder than a butterbeer. She’d never asked him why.

“Well, I’m a gin martini girl, myself,” she tells him, “That or a good Tinworth Iced Tea, but I think _this_ might do the trick, tonight.”

She sets the bottle of Arámbula between them when she turns, reaching down the counter for a stray saltshaker, summoning a fresh lime and a small knife from the kitchen. She cuts the lime into wedges, winking at Neville while he lifts up the bottle by the neck, examining the label.

“Tequila?”

“You know how it goes, right?” Hannah nods, taking back the bottle to pour them both a generous shot. “A couple shots of Arámbula, and even the strictest, most uptight witch will want to throw off her cloak and dance on the tables.”

She smiles, then licks a spot on her wrist and taps the saltshaker over it. Neville follows her lead, mirroring her as she raises her glass in a silent toast, licks the salt, and then tosses back the shot. He sputters and grimaces at the end and she laughs at him, biting into her lime, and before she knows what’s happened, they’re halfway through the bottle.

“To more time in the greenhouse,” Neville says. They’re on round four – or maybe five? It’s their fourth round of shots, minimum, she’s sure of that.

“To a new adventure!” Hannah counters, pouring them both another shot and touching her glass to his.

Neville keeps his eyes on hers while they drink. “Ah, yes, _dating_ ,” he says with a shudder, glass tapping against the counter as he sets it down, “I forgot that _that’s_ the next great adventure – _dating_ , yes, _truly_ , the last great undiscovered country –”

Hannah snickers and smacks him lightly with the back of her knuckles. Neville catches her by the wrist before she can back away, and he turns it lightly, tracing shapes along the inside of her forearm with his fingertips, driving her to distraction. Hannah feels warm all over – something that is equal parts the alcohol and the current company she’s keeping – and she resists the sudden urge to unfasten the top buttons of her blouse.

“All right,” she says, shaking her head a little, trying to bring some sense back into her thinking. “That’s enough for both of us.”

“Why?” he asks. Neville keeps on touching her, blunted tips of his fingers curling over the pulse point in her wrist, and Hannah cannot bring herself to pull away. “Aren’t we having a good time?”

Hannah bites her lip, tastes lime and salt. It wouldn’t be a lie to tell him that if she has any more of this tequila, she’s going to slip right past ‘drunk’ and into ‘sick,’ or that she doesn’t want to ruin their friendship if they take this any further. But it also wouldn’t be the whole truth. God, who is she kidding? Hannah is teetering right on the edge of ‘drunk enough for this to be a good idea,’ and she wants – she _wants_ –

“Because if I have one more shot of this,” she tells him, flicking her fingers against the base of the bottle, “I’ll want to take you upstairs and fuck your brains out.”

There’s a moment’s pause before Neville tugs her by the wrist, pulling her forward so that he can meet her halfway across the bar between them, the countertop cutting into her chest as he leans in to kiss her. She doesn’t realize that she’s holding her breath until Neville presses his lips against hers; she gasps into his mouth, which he takes as an invitation to deepen the kiss, slipping his free hand into her hair, his thumb just brushing the sensitive skin behind her ear. She pulls away from him with a whimper, because as much as she doesn’t want to stop kissing him, she isn’t interested in doing this in the middle of the pub.

“ _Okay_ ,” she manages, licking her lips, laughing as she comes around to the other side of the bar and Neville moves to stand beside her, one hand curving over her hip, the small of her back. “ _Okay_ , then. Let’s go.”

**…**

Neville was the Auror who found her.

She didn’t recognize him, not at first: alone, barefoot, crying uncontrollably in the middle of the deserted street, he came out of the shadows like a villain in an old noir film and she drew her wand on him when he first made his approach. Neville disarmed her easily; her wand shot right into his hand at his _Expelliarmus_ and it wasn’t until she heard him speak that she realized it wasn’t a vampire or a rapist or a rogue come to take advantage of her hysterical state – it was _Neville_. Neville, her DA compatriot; Neville, her _friend_ ; Neville, who was maybe the only person she could have handled seeing her like this.

Neville held onto her wand while he asked her what happened, running a hand down her arm, checking her over for bruises, and Hannah couldn’t talk, not at first; she felt her mouth open but instead of words another ragged sob fell out, her whole body shaking with the effort it took to stay upright. She tipped forward and Neville caught her in his arms before she could fall, gathered her up in a hug so tight that it squeezed the air right out of her. She shook in his embrace, heaving through silent tears that left dark splotches on his nice uniform robes, the trainee patch on the lapel scratching against her cheek.

They never talked about it, after; he’d held her there in that yellow circle of lamplight until she’d calmed down enough to move, and he put his arm around her waist as he walked her to the Cauldron. He never asked what had set her off, never tried to pry into her personal life and get the deeper story – no, Neville was a gentleman through and through, and he put her in the care of her grandfather without a word to anyone else about what he’d witnessed. She realized, later, that she probably should have been embarrassed about the whole thing: if anyone else had seen her in that state she would have felt humiliated, ashamed. But Hannah remembered how he looked when he finally turned to leave: the honesty in his expression, the compassion, vulnerability. Understanding, in a way that no one else outside the Hogwarts class of ’98 ever could ever seem to reach. She looked at him that night and had the same feeling she had with her grandfather that night: that feeling of surfacing, of relief.

She looked at him and thought, however briefly, _I trust you_.

She looked at him and thought, _there you are_.

**…**

It takes them maybe twenty minutes before they make it all the way up the stairs to Hannah’s flat on the top floor. Neville kept kissing her on every landing, pushing her up against walls, hands roaming under her shirt, and it was all Hannah could do not to strip off right there on the third – the fourth – the fifth floor, paying guests of the Cauldron be damned. By the time she gets her door unlocked, Neville wastes no time: he presses her against it once she slams it shut behind them, kissing her hard, fumbling in his hurry to unfasten his belt, to yank down the zipper on her jeans. Hannah kicks off her shoes, one flying halfway across the room, and is barely out of her pants when Neville presses two fingers over her striped cotton knickers, inhaling sharply when he feels how wet she is, soaking through the fabric.

He’s surprised. _She’s_ surprised, feeling like all the air has been sucked out of her lungs as she shimmies the rest of the way out of her jeans, as Neville tugs her panties down and off – as he slides two fingers easily inside her, strokes the pad of his thumb over her clit.

“ _F-fuck_ ,” she gasps, her head lolling back against the door. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”

Neville smiles at her, the sly curve of his mouth somehow managing to be both wicked and sheepish at the same time, and kisses under her jaw. “A gorgeous blonde said she wanted to fuck me,” he says, lips moving lower down her neck. “Figured I had to move quick, before she changed her mind.”

“So – just to be clear, we’re just going to stay at the door?” Hannah slides her hand up under his shirt, feels how warm he is. Neville brushes his thumb over her clit again, twice, a third time, and she clenches around him, the muscles in her thighs twitch. She can’t quite focus enough to get her bra off, or get her own shirt unbuttoned. “Can’t even get me into bed?”

“Not for round one,” Neville laughs, “We’ve got all day, after this.”

He twists the fingers he has inside her, adding a third, moving against her in slow, sure strokes like he already knows what makes her tick, like they’ve already done this a hundred times before. Hannah gasps again and tips her face forward, panting into his neck, fingers clutching onto his arms. He starts to move faster, applying more pressure, and Hannah can already feel the tension pooling low and hot in her belly; a wire pulling taut, getting ready to snap.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she manages, moaning into his mouth when he kisses her hard, breathless when they part. “Thought you were going to _fuck me_ , Longbottom, you brought me all the way up here –”

And Neville laughs at that, laughs so that she can feel it rumbling all the way through her, and kisses her again to stop her talking. He moves back enough so that she can help him out of his Auror robes, finally getting the belt out of the buckle, his pants around his knees as she summons a condom from her dresser drawer with her wand. _Impressive_ , he murmurs as she drops the wand to the floor, rolling over the rug behind them in a shower of yellow sparks. Hannah tears the packet open with her teeth, Neville sucking in a breath as she strokes his cock, one hand reaching down to cover hers as she rolls the condom on. He kisses her again and lifts her up against the door, holds her there with one strong arm as he lines himself up against her cunt, as he pushes deep inside her. Hannah groans at the feeling and reflexively wraps her legs around him, pinned between Neville and the door as he starts to fuck her hard and fast, one hand buried in his hair, the other scratching at his back, his bicep, his shoulder, digging her nails into whatever she can reach.

“How’s that?” he teases, and when Hannah tugs hard at his hair in response he drops her a little, worry flashing in his eyes when he feels her slip from his grasp. “I’ve got you,” he says then, grabbing her arse to pull her up, shifting her one leg higher over his hip, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you. We’re gonna have such a good time, Han – you’re so fucking _beautiful_ , you feel so good –”

“You can save the sweet-talk,” she says in his ear, “I’m already fucking you,” and Neville shifts his free hand so that he can stroke his fingers over her clit, making her jolt, her back arching. It’s a literal _crime_ , that Neville Longbottom is this good with his hands.

“Maybe I _like_ sweet-talking,” he murmurs back , tilting her body toward his, dipping his head to nip at her collarbone, the tops of her breasts. She is _still_ wearing a shirt, she realizes from a distance. _How_ is she still wearing a shirt? How are they _both_ still half-dressed? Neville kisses down her throat, rocks his hips into hers, and the way he moves inside her sends rational thought flying right on out the window. “All the girls say I’m a sweet guy, you know.”

“A sweet guy!” Hannah echoes on a laugh, all jagged and breathless, already teetering on the razor’s edge of her climax, “A real sweetheart, fucking me against the _fucking door_ –”

Neville stops her with another kiss and it’s just what she’s been looking for: he pushes into her faster, deeper, rubs the pads of those thick fingers over her clit until it’s all too much, and Hannah comes with a high, helpless noise, thighs twitching and toes curling as Neville fucks her through it. She slumps a little against him and he bears her weight, groaning into her neck, his own climax just a few sharp thrusts behind her own. Hannah isn’t sure how long they stay there like that, catching their breath, his cock still inside her, before she realizes how ridiculous they must look.

“ _You_ ,” she tells him, dropping a kiss to his forehead, pushing her fingers through his sweaty hair, “Are _damn lucky_ I didn’t get that doorknob jammed straight into my back.”

“What can I say? I lead a charmed life.” He kisses the hinge of her jaw as he shifts his hips and slides out of her, easing her down to the floor. They’re both standing on shaky legs, and Neville pulls his pants back up before he moves toward the bathroom to get rid of the condom. “Meet me in the bed, next. No doorknobs in that, right?”

“Of course,” Hannah scoffs, reaching for her wand. A murmured spell, a quick wave and a jab, and she’s set for her own contraception spell. “I have a very strict policy – ‘never sleep with anyone who keeps a doorknob in their bed.’ Imagine my surprise that not everyone feels the same way.”

He disappears for a moment and Hannah pads off into her bedroom, suddenly very, _very_ glad she managed to tidy up the place before she started her shift yesterday. She’s just put her wand away in the case on her dresser when Neville comes back from the bathroom, and he’s shaking his head at her, laughing a little under his breath. “No doorknobs, huh? That… that must really cut down your options.”

“You’d be surprised,” she teases, “There are a _lot_ of strange, unusual men and women out there, Neville – you never know what kind of madness you’ll find on your next blind date.”

Neville taken off his shirt somewhere between the bathroom and her bed, but his trousers, are unbuttoned and undone so that she can see the red and green check of his boxers, the belt unfastened but still slipped through the loops. He sinks down onto the bed and reaches for her, pulling her down in one smooth motion so that she’s straddling his lap, his hands warm against her skin where they bracket her hips.

“You should just keep sleeping with me, then,” he tells her, popping open the buttons on her blouse she still hasn’t taken off. His belt buckle scrapes against the inside of her thigh and it doesn’t feel bad, not really: she likes the way they fit together, warm and safe and teasing. “Cut the chase entirely. No knobs in my bed, I promise – I mean, _well_ , there’d be at least _one_ –” 

She kisses him to cut him off, and neither one of them can stop from laughing as she does it, neither one can stop from smiling. Hannah winds her arms around his neck when they finally part, playing with the hair at the back of his neck. Neville slides his hands up her back to unhook her bra and Hannah just wants him to touch her again – her hips, her face, her chest, she doesn’t care where, she just wants that contact again. She wants it more than anything.

“Yeah,” she says, and presses her forehead against his. “Yeah, I think I could be alright with that.”

And the thing is, she really, _really_ could be.


End file.
